The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

THE INNER STUDIO
and purification. In order to connect with a more soulful level of
design, we need to be aware of the power of places and things to
move us, and this is most directly appreciated through experiencing
the symbolic world.
Belongings, Possessions
There is always something we would like to add to what we already
own and things we need to get rid of. We are engaged in a busy
exchange of keeping, acquiring, storing, displaying, and discarding.
The word “belongings” says it best. There are things that we
develop strong attachments to and there are things we are no
longer tied to. We have a sense that things not only belong to us,
they have acquired a capacity to connect us to a place. They are
part of why we feel we belong. Objects help us to belong because
they carry an aspect of our emotional lives; they lift the space out
of the realm of utility and help us to cross over some subtle threshold
that divides utility from warmth. The architect Le Corbusier’s
famous statement that a house is a machine for living in, while
perhaps directed at technology and issues of production, became a
powerful voice in the making of the modern idea of home.
We personalize objects, or as these objects age under our care,
they acquire special properties. A room filled with our belongings
is enhanced. We demand less in hotel rooms than we would in our
own world because it is temporary. When we travel we bring what
we need for the trip in a practical sense, but there are always things
we bring that have nothing to do with being practical.
A friend told me she didn’t like her home, but she didn’t know why.
She asked me to visit her there and see if anything could be done
to make the place more comfortable. She had lived in the apartment
for several years and it had everything she needed to be physically
comfortable: a big sofa facing a big TV, lots of pictures on the wall.
We talked for a while, but the problem didn’t seem to be the
arrangement of her furniture. When I asked her about her favorite
things, she began to talk with great reverence and enthusiasm
about a collection of antique beaded handbags she had received
from her grandfather. When I asked to see them, she left the room
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